There has been an increasing trend in the mechanics community of adopting ab-initio approaches such as Density Functional Theory (DFT) to reliably predict a wide range of material properties as well as mechanical behavior in different structural systems. This mini-symposium aims to bring together researchers who have been working on various aspects of ab-initio methods with mechanics based applications in mind. In particular, we welcome contributions in the following areas: 1. Development of ab-initio methods for the study of large systems. 2. First principles statics and dynamics simulations (Born-Oppenheimer, Car-Parrinello Molecular dynamics) 3. Study of mechanical and material phenomena (such as plasticity, fracture) using ab-initio methods. 4. Development of multiscale methods based on first-principles calculations.

Phani Motamarri, University of Michigan, United StatesVikram Gavini, Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, GermanyThomas Blesgen, Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Germany